Things In Politico That Make Me Want To Guzzle Antifreeze, Part The Infinity

Part of "winning the morning" is to throw something out there that causes a sufficient number of people to say, "Jeebus Christmas, this is a really wack right here. Let me forward it to everyone in my office so we can all have a good laugh before the boss gets here and turns the radio back to that dumbass Christian station again." Case in point — today, in the columns of Tiger Beat On The Potomac, we are advised not to sleep onthe national ambitionsof Senator Aqua Buddha of Kentucky, the newly minted liberal lion and darling of brogressive Democrats everywhere. TBOTP has noticed that the junior senator from Kentucky has gotten himself some run in the elite media over the last couple of weeks, including a win in the straw poll conducted last week in the locked ward of the monkeyhouse. (We should always remember that the only real political gift the members of the Paul family have is the ability to win straw polls and small caucuses. Give these people the kitchen and they'll have the den by dinner.) Therefore, hey, look, a new shiny thing!

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With his filibuster against the Obama administration's drone policy, a first-place finish in the Conservative Political Action Conference presidential straw poll - and on Tuesday, a speech pressing for immigration reform - the Kentuckian is on a roll. The Iowa Republican Party announced Tuesday that Paul will headline their Lincoln Day Dinner on May 10, a coveted invitation for any GOP presidential hopeful.

Let me look at my calendar. Yeah, it's still 2013. I don't have to care.

Here are five reasons why Paul will be a force to be reckoned with ahead of 2016, even if the odds of him winning the nomination are long.

Your calendar says the same thing. Trust the calendar, young padawan.

He has a stronger organization than any other Republican. Paul starts with a built-in base of libertarians that comprises at least 10 percent of the GOP electorate, and his boosters have made tremendous inroads in state parties around the country. They may be a minority, but they are a devoted one. Paul supporters will drive farther and work harder than any other 2016 contender's core backers. They also tend to be younger and engaged on social media and the blogosphere in ways that people who support someone of the older generation like, say, Jeb Bush are not.

This was also true of his pops, Crazy Uncle Liberty (!). The problem is that this particular enthusiastic minority tends to remain a minority throughout the Republican primary process. Is there any indication that his son — who, against all odds, is less likable than the old man — can create a movement beyond the cool T-shirts? Doubtful.

He's perceived as principled. Grass-roots conservatives in the early states loathe career politicians as much as ever. There's a real appetite for someone who doesn't always do the politically prudent thing. The filibuster was a seminal moment not because it changed the conversation on drones but because it showed that Paul cared so deeply about something that he was willing to not urinate for 13 hours. Even liberal critics, from Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison to Bill Maher, praised him for fighting to support what he believes in.

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Yeah, those grassroots conservatives really loathe career politicians. That's why the grassroots conservatives in Iowa keep electing Charles Grassley, the biggest twit on Twitter, and seem prepared to promote xenophobic goober Steve King to join him in the Senate. And they haven't cared about "principles" since Reagan ran up the debt and raised taxes to bail his ass out. Even so, I don't think you'll be seeing Aqua Buddha running spots in Ottumwa with his pals, Keith Ellison and Bill Maher.

Civil libertarian issues seem closest to Paul's heart, but Paul's staunch fiscal conservatism is deeply appealing to many who never backed the elder Paul.

Bull. Also, shit. Rand Paul doesn't give a damn about civil liberties if they are abridged by, say, your boss or, if you happen to be a lady with ladyparts, your state legislature. He believes in civil liberties. He just doesn't think it's the job of the federal government to protect them.

He's more cautious than voters realize. His immigration speech is a case in point. An early draft obtained by The Associated Press prompted the wire to report that he would endorse a "path to citizenship," but when Paul delivered his speech, he avoided that term. Afterward, he and his team offered conflicting explanations but stressed he doesn't support "amnesty." The episode showed how careful Paul is not to offend activists in places like Iowa.

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So someone bought this principled fellow the Rosetta Stone program for Weaselspeak, and it's working out well. No wonder a Politico reporter is impressed.

On other issues, Paul takes a states-rights federalist approach. He thinks states should decide whether to allow medicinal marijuana, for example.

"States rights" and "federalism" are not the same thing. Federalism is the system designed by Mr. Madison et. al. specifically as a remedy to the states-rights philosophy run amuck under the Articles Of Confederation. A subsequent attempt at a "states rights" government, the Confederate States Of America, fell apart because of a critical lack of...wait for it...federal power in the national government. This makes me crazy.

He appears to have fewer skeletons than his father. Ron Paul faced attacks from the right over racist statements decades earlier in newsletters that bore his name, his criticism of Ronald Reagan in the '80s and suggesting that the CIA under President George H.W. Bush was involved in drug trafficking.

Attacks from "the right" on these issues? Really? I don't recall that many "from the right" about the racial content of the newsletter, or any at all concerning Reagan or Poppy Bush. Crazy Uncle Liberty (!) brought them up, but they were dismissed as the ravings of a crank.

Barring a surprise, opponents have nowhere near the volume of material on Rand Paul, a benefit of spending most of his adult life on the periphery of politics. He did come under fire during his 2010 campaign for questioning the constitutionality of a section of the Civil Right Act of 1964.

"I think you don't have a right to happiness - you have the right to the pursuit of happiness," Paul, an ophthalmologist, said in a 2009 Kentucky town hall meeting. "[I]f you think you have the right to health care, you are saying basically that I am your slave. I provide health care. ... My staff and technicians provide it. ... If you have a right to health care, then you have a right to their labor."

"The fundamental reason why Medicare is failing is why the Soviet Union failed - socialism doesn't work," Paul said on Kentucky public TV on June 16, 1998. "You have ... no price fluctuation."

"The other thing just infuriates me is that they blame greed," Paul said at the rally. "Not that greed is a good thing to have. ... But it is an indirect way of blaming capitalism. What is greed? Greed is an excess of self-interest, but what drives capitalism? Self-interest and profit. They are good things."

And here is what he said while "questioning the constitutionality" of the Civil Rights Act.

I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part-and this is the hard part about believing in freedom-is, if you believe in the First Amendment, for example-you have too, for example, most good defenders of the First Amendment will believe in abhorrent groups standing up and saying awful things. . . . It's the same way with other behaviors. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior.

Jim Crow was simply a rather more organized exercise in "boorish behavior." And you know what happened to those brave white people who stood up in their communities? Their businesses cratered. They got their loans called in. It was suggested that they absent themselves from the communities. And that's if they were lucky. Idiot.

And he has taken pains to brand his foreign policy ideas as within the GOP mainstream. In a recent speech, he described himself as an heir to Ronald Reagan when it comes to national security - "a realist," Paul said, "not a neoconservative, nor an isolationist." That didn't go over so well with the neoconservatives, who believe he is trying to put a gentle face on a vision for U.S. withdrawal from the world.

In other words, this is an exercise in crapola that not even Bill Kristol will buy.